I don't know enough about the alternatives to namecoin to comment on them - i don't think any of them are used as much as even namecoin was at its height (which

I don't know enough about the alternatives to namecoin to comment on them - i don't think any of them are used as much as even namecoin was at its height (which was still not much, but at least Wikileaks was using it and OpenNic supported it at one time). ZeroNet still uses it, but ZeroNet is in questionable shape right now. Namecoin had issues with cyber squatting and spam, i would assume any alternatives significantly used would suffer a similar fate.